Researchers from oil giant ExxonMobil and Georgia Institute of Technology in the US have developed a technology that has the potential to dramatically reduce energy consumption and emissions in the production of plastics.
The findings are published in a peer-reviewed journal Science. The ExxonMobil stressed that, when used in an industrial scale new technology could reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by 45 million tonnes worldwide. Furthermore, it can reduce the cost of production of plastics all over the world by $ 2 Bln.
Researchers have identified paraxylene required for the synthesis of polyesters and other polymers, a mixture of hydrocarbons using a molecular filter, a reverse osmosis system variations. Existing manufacturing technologies in the world uses a lot of energy for the separation of these molecules.

Plastics.ru